Let’s get the terminology right before investigating the facts about the relation between internet and GPS tracking. Everybody knows what the internet is more than anything in the world. The smartphones have made the internet a needy thing in order to survive in today’s world.
But that is not the case with GPS tracking. Even though smartphones have the GPS functionality, it is unclear to some of us whether the GPS would work without the internet or not. So, let us make the facts right and clear the confusion right away.
GPS – One of the most expensive free service
Yes. It is right. GPS is one of the expensive tech things that is available free of cost. Now some of you may have arguments like governments pay for this service from the taxes they have collected from people so in the sense it is not free. I totally agree. You are right. But we are not paying the government for using it directly like the telecom industry where we pay the phone bills monthly.
So, what is GPS?
GPS is the constellation of man-made satellites that revolves the earth in purpose of providing location mapping. Anyone can utilize these satellites if you have a GPS receiver. GPS receiver uses the signals from nearby satellites to pinpoint its location on earth. Pretty amazing thing to do with such a small chip.
The relation between GPS tracking and Internet
Absolutely nothing. GPS Tracking does not need internet connectivity if the GPS receiver and the position of the user are the same. For example, In smart phones you can use the GPS offline if the maps are pre-Downloaded. Here the GPS receiver on your smart phone and position of the user (That’s you!) are the same. But there is a big difference when it comes to tracking using a GPS tracker. In this you are trying to locate the GPS receiver which is far away from you.
In the second case you would not be able to see the location if there is no data transfer between your device and the GPS receiver located at the remote location (I.e., on the tracker device). For that purposes internet connectivity is deployed. On a GPS tracker device, a sim card is installed as a mode of communication between the user and the remote tracking device. For the uninterrupted connection, most GPS trackers uses M2M sim cards.
In fact, the GPS Tracking will be very limited without the internet and we wouldn’t be harnessing GPS as we do now. The integration of internet with the GPS tracking system has made lot of improvement to the operation and performance of the entire system. The real time tracking is the best part among this. The possibility is endless as the internet holds an ocean of information which can be used for better GPS navigation and tracking experience.
Final Thoughts
Internet plays a vital role in GPS tracking and present-day navigation systems. The internet connection helps the GPS tracker to transfer the location data to the user screen and enables live tracking experience. Tracking a moving car from the comfort of your home wouldn’t be possible if there is no internet support. In fact internet has provided a gate way to utilize tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to the GPS tracking system.
